I’m always eager to spread the word about the Smile Train.
This month’s Harvard magazine has a nice piece on the founder of the Smile Train, Brian Mullaney.
I love the way he runs his organization, and the way he tells it like it is. Here’s one of my favorite quotes from the article:
Most charities don’t see themselves as a business. … [They] can be terribly managed, pay people poorly, and yet never go out of business. They’re almost like churches; people say, “That’s O.K., because their hearts are in the right place.” At Smile Train, we pay people market-rate salaries and if they’re really good, we give them a bonus, and if they’re not, we fire them — we don’t care where their heart is; it can go somewhere else.
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. You can also watch it on 
a -
Thanks for the clarification. I know next to nothing about non-profits, so I appreciate your insight.
I cannot speak for all non-profits. But I did work for one for a period of time. It was a non-profit whose purpose was to help girls. I learned alot. No organization is perfect, but at least this one made a great effort to gain knowledge and to use it for said purpose. The motivation was to be helpful and the attitude was positive and service oriented. I cannot say this about my supposed “health” insurer. If my doctor does not file for benefits, he loses out and I have seen the way they pay. If I were an md, I would not be one under this plan. Let say the doctor normally charges 250. they pay 10 or something in that vicinity. How can a doctor survive this way unless they adopt the Mac hamburgher approach of fast food? This is a question. I wish that I had the answer?
My company’s a nonprofit this year.
Read the post and the linked articles, then immediately Googled Smile Train and made a donation. But next time maybe provide a link to the donation website?
Smile Train Outcomes has touched millions of children around the world. Regardless of the controversy Smile Train is still the leading charity of its kind. They have a great reputation and have raised millions of dollars for a great cause.
c
The government will eventually do away with charities by making them non-deductible. Obamacare will name a Czar to do a five year plan. The GAO will come along and discover that “unexpectedly” 1% has gone to operations and the rest to ACORN & SEIU both of whom made very large contributions to the Committee to RE-elect. If these men and women have indeed helped as many children as it appears, I am happy. If it is a lie, then I am glad my money went to a capitalist instead of a communist dictator. I just ponied up another $375 for the triple match…that will certainly do more good than an entitlement payment to someone milking the federal system.
I was just about to make donation to Smile Train but because it would be above and beyond the token amounts I make from time to time to random causes, I decided to do a little research. Everything was looking okay until I got to BBB page with their corporate numbers. The founder Brian was on that report listed as taking an annual compensation of close to 3/4 of a MILLION dollars for his heartfelt efforts! Well that just floored me and I had to stop dead in my tracks and ask the question “Why on earth would a person really intent on helping all these children want to siphon off so much of people’s donations for his own profit? I can understand of course if he has a family to feed and donates so much of histime to this that he has none left to make a living …in that case of course a TYPICAL comfortable salary would not bother me a bit …but when he taking THAT much, I HAVE to question his heart, his true motivations and what else he might feel inclined to help himself to without anyone even knowing it? Is this really where we are at today, that in order to help the needy we have to accept that the people who started them might have the motive of getting rich or richer as their driving force? I guess that salary would not have bothered me nearly so much if it was a man HIRED by Smile Train rather the one the founded it! I mean if lets say Smile Train had been unable to provide the funding they needed to help children and as a solution they could hire a top level exec powerhouse that could really turn things around, then all right it might make good sense. If you pay someone a million bucks a year to run things and overnight he is bringing in several times what you are paying him then it simply becomes the best possible use of donations to pay the man, at that point donors might care less about his heart and motivations, he is like a paid mercenary or whatever but he then would only be a hired hand watched over closely by the good hearted folks that ultimately control things…. because he would not be someone I would trust to run everything, to make decisions at a sovereign level! No way!
So someone please correct me if I have it wrong! Is Brian the founder of Smile Train? Does he really take such a large salary in compensation? If so why on earth should trust my donation there knowing that right off that bat a bunch of it is going into this man’s own charity…himself!
Unless someone can change my mind I am going to pass on my planned donation and look around for someone else doing the same thing where I can be convinced that motivations are from their heart only!
Dougie Quick
Yeah, but what about Mullaney’s 600,000 plus annual salary. This is a non-profit charity?
When you are paying $678,000 to the President of Smile Train Brian Mullaney, I know who’s smiling here..
http://www.charitywatch.org/articles/smiletrain.html
“The letter does not tell you that Mullaney’s total compensation skyrocketed 61% from $420,210 in fiscal 2007 to $678,058 in fiscal 2009—also in spite of the downturn in the economy.”
I do believe in charity, & no matter how good a President of a charitable organization is I don’t feel he needs more money than President of the United States of America. Or do we now know where this “Charity” is headed??
Just when I think I’ve got a genuinely “sincere” charity to which I can donate, I see the CEO compensation and get nauseous. So many of these “honest charities” either have a history of donations abuse and legal actions (against directors or CEO’s) or too large a chunk of donations go for ambiguous “operating expenses”. I’m all for fairly paying quality folks to run things, but the CEO compensation for this org. is excessive. Especially with the current economic times and attitude toward Wall St compensation and bonuses. I always get pulled in emotionally with print or TV ads for the unfortunate and then get wary about donating. I then do some digging and usually find some kind of abuse or history of corruption. Yes, I feel guilty, but I’d like my donation to truly and directly affect a child’s life and not to pay for the office Christmas party. I’d love to see the child I help and perhaps stay in contact and continue to help support that child. Is that possible? Fact is I can well afford to donate and want to, but where to do so is the question.